First Images of Russian-European Manned Spacecraft 191
oliderid writes "The first official image of a Russian-European manned spacecraft has been unveiled.
It is designed to replace the Soyuz vehicle currently in use by Russia and will allow Europe to participate directly in crew transportation.The reusable ship was conceived to carry four people towards the Moon, rivaling the US Ares/Orion system. This project is the Plan A for the European Space agency. The plan B is an evolution of the ATV proposed by a consortium of European companies led by Astrium."
Go Europe! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Go Europe! (Score:4, Funny)
They can go visit the Moon, but the US has already claimed it with the cunning use of flags.
Yeah they claimed it, but we're going to take it! Muhahaha!!!!! :-P
Re:Go Europe! (Score:5, Insightful)
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All the conspiracy theorists would blieve us anyway
You mean all the 0.003% of the population they represent? Hmmm.. indeed, you don't want that...
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The world sometimes *is* a scary place...
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I'm not sure what sort of people you know, but I don't know a single person who believes the moon landings were faked. And more than that, they think its ridiculous anyone would suggest otherwise.
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I know people that would question anything that the government says. If the government says crime is down, they'd refute it. If the government says that man has been to the moon, they'd give it a healthy dose of scepticism. If the government says that the moon isn't, in fact, made of cheese, they'd still pack crackers in their rocket ships.
Re:Go Europe! (Score:4, Funny)
People voting against Bush and Obama
Oh, I hadn't realized Obama had chosen his running mate...
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Yeap, we are going to get brother jeb in the whitehouse. May god have mercy on us all.
Question (Score:2)
This poses an interesting concept: how to destroy something on the moon?
Say you're an astronaut tasked with removing a non-US flag from the lunar surface. What the hell do you do with it?
* You can't hide it in your return vessel - someone might find it.
* You can't "space" it once on your return vector since it might be spotted, plus the airlock activity would show in the mission log.
* Burning it is out of the question.
I guess that leaves "put it under a rock" as your only option, but someone could stumble
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I refute your refutation. Where is the blue string pudding?
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Is there any way we can look through a telescope from Earth and see the flag on the moon? That's something I've always wondered.
It would shut a lot of people up pretty quickly.
Well that, or talk about how we just tied the thing to a missile and shot it at the moon like a javelin...
Rover? (Score:5, Funny)
Is there any way we can look through a telescope from Earth and see the flag on the moon?
Well, our esteemed Houston (Democrat) Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee suggested that the Mars Pathfinder could do that for us [nationalreview.com].
But I guess then they'd claim Pathfinder [nasa.gov] was fake.
Re:Go Europe! (Score:5, Informative)
Go Yerp! (Score:2)
Is there any way we can look through a telescope from Earth and see the flag on the moon?
Flag on the moon. How did it get there? Secret data. Pictures of the Moon. Secret Data, never before outside the Kremlin. Manâ(TM)s first rocket to the Moon.
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There is plenty of proof that we went to the moon with out looking for the flags.
The first if the radio signals themselves that the moon mission used. Those messages where on an open channel so anyone could listen in. You bet the Soviets where listening in to every word said. They would have went over those communications with a tweezers and microscope. If they found anything specious they would have screamed bullshit. Plus you know they had spies inside nasa watching everything.
The only people wit
Re:Go Europe! (Score:5, Informative)
A Better Way (Score:2)
When I meet a lunar landing skeptic, I tell them about the LLRE [wikipedia.org] laser ranging program. In short, during Apollo, we put a bunch of reflectors on the Moon, and to this day, we shoot lasers at them to gauge the precise distance from the Earth to the Moon. Kind of hard to fake that on a soundstage.
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I remember seeing an actual video of the command module orbiting the moon taken through a big ass schmidt-cassegrainian camera telescope, you could just barley recognize the CM and it as on the ragged edge of the usage resolution. To image the flag from Earth or LEO is probably impossible but the Hubble would be the tool of choice to find out for sure.
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the US has already claimed it
"Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. We came in peace for all mankind."
I wonder if China or Russia would make such a profound and inclusive statement.
the hell? (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like a goddamn iCapsule. Damn you, Jobs!
Anyone else getting depressed with the space race? We've been at it for decades and the latest and greatest the Ruskies and Americans come up with looks like pretty much the same shit we've been doing for years, or in America's case, a 30 year wasted effort and then we come back to capsules. Repackaging the same old shit, up the price and call it a new version for the future, where have I seen this before? Oh, right, Microsoft. Apollo would be something along the lines of Win9x, better than what came before but not great. The shuttle would be like WinMil, we skipped XP and went straight to Vista with this Constellation debacle, and once that fails the next next shuttle successor will be something like Windows 7, a looming future failure.
*sigh*
Re:the hell? (Score:5, Insightful)
The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.
There's just no way to cheaply lift payload to orbit using our current rockets. That's why there's no revolutions in spacecraft-building.
We need something like space-plane, launch loops or space elevator for new space revolution.
Re:the hell? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought they pushed -- opposite and equal reaction and all that
Re:the hell? (Score:4, Funny)
The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.
I thought they pushed -- opposite and equal reaction and all that
They blow.
Reminds me of the woman at HP Germany where I gave a training many years ago. When we talked about a cooling fan, she asked: "Does it suck or blow?" Yes I was able to control my face, but it was hard.
Re:the hell? (Score:5, Interesting)
The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.
There's just no way to cheaply lift payload to orbit using our current rockets. That's why there's no revolutions in spacecraft-building.
We need something like space-plane, launch loops or space elevator for new space revolution.
Indeed. I always thought space elevators seemed so fantastic as to be beyond belief but damned if that might become practical before the seemingly less-challenging Buck Rogers rockets.
I always liked the idea for the old Orion drive ships. "We're not going to be building these things like dainty tinfoil creations, they'll be welded together in drydocks like navy destroyers and weigh about as much. Float 'em out to see, light off the a-bombs, they can handle the weight." Now I don't think even Dick Cheney could go along with the idea of a bomb-powered ship but I wonder if anti-matter would be a suitable replacement charge? Aside from the issue of not being able to manufacture it in any sort of significant quantity, I'm wondering how bad the gamma flashes would be. Would it be safe if we towed launch vehicles out in the middle of the ocean? How much ocean water would it take to block the rays? Would there be any ionizing radiation to produce fallout?
I've heard some other crazy ideas for non-chemical rockets. One design has pellets of deuterium dropped into a chamber where they are precisely hit by multiple lasers and causes a tiny fusion explosion that is forced out the bottom of the ship, giving a far better bang for the buck than conventional propellants.
It just seems like we're rehashing the way things were done before instead of coming up with something new. Is it that the technology is so bleedin' difficult to invent, is it a lack of money and political will, or would the danger of the technology be so great that there's no way in hell anyone would sign off on it? I mean, we could have built Orion in the 50's, we could crash-build one of those things in the event of some planetary emergency (i.e. needing to get Bruce Willis up to an asteroid to blow up), but nothing short of that would convince people to use nukes for go-juice.
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"I've heard some other crazy ideas for non-chemical rockets. One design has pellets of deuterium dropped into a chamber where they are precisely hit by multiple lasers and causes a tiny fusion explosion that is forced out the bottom of the ship, giving a far better bang for the buck than conventional propellants."
Isn't that the description for the Enterprise's impulse drive?
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yup, eight engines and the same firing order as a small block chevy engine.
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Uh, I always thought that the Orion system was intended to be used in space (where fallout isn't exactly a problem), rather than for getting the vehicle off the ground. That said, and I digress here, it would actually be a decent answer to the whole nuclear proliferation problem:
1. US and Russia draw up specs for nuke-pro
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4. BOOM. (Yeah, I know, in space, nobody can hear you detonate your nuclear weapons. Bear with me here.) Ship is now traveling very fast away from point of detonation.
a. it would be inefficient, as only a small portion of the blast would be used to actually propel the craft, the rest would just go off into space.
...
b. it could only be used for non-fragile payloads (i.e. water, food) due to the sudden acceleration.
c. how do you control direction ?
then there's the political issues
Re:the hell? (Score:5, Informative)
The blast is deceptive, it is generated by the released gamma radiation being absorbed by surrounding matter rather than by the contents of the bomb absorbing energy. On Earth nuclear explosions have a big blast because their is plenty of atmosphere to absorb the gamma, radiate less energetic photons, and expand, a nuclear burst in the water is much less effective blast-wise than an airburst and a in-ground blast is down-right disappointing. In space there is no practically atmosphere so there is little to expand due to the energy release except for the ablative coatings in the engines themselves. Eventually we'll be pushing asteroids around by detonating nuc's near them which will vaporize the surface facing the release and generating the expanding reaction mass.
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However, wouldn't it make more sense to have a controlled output rather than a big blast ?
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Oh yeah, Bussard Ramjets [wikipedia.org] rocks as long as the Syncrotron Radiation [wikipedia.org] doesn't fry your ass.
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What, you don't think water absorbs the energies from the bomb (gamma and x-rays) in the same way that the atmosphere does?
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That's why Orion pulse units have focusing systems to focus more of the blast in the direction of the vehicle being propelled.
Nope, pusher plates mounted on shock absorbers absorb the blast and deliver it smoothly to the main vehicle.
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a. it would be inefficient, as only a small portion of the blast would be used to actually propel the craft, the rest would just go off into space.
Inefficient compared to what? An orion drive has the highest ISP of any propulsion system possible with our technology. In other words, it's *still* more efficient than a regular rocket.
b. it could only be used for non-fragile payloads (i.e. water, food) due to the sudden acceleration.
false. Shock absorbers would be used. See project orion [wikipedia.org]. This has been studied by engineers a lot smarter than you or I.
c. how do you control direction ?
This question shows an incredible ignorance of how space travel works. You seem to be imagining a need to turn a corner.
then there's the political issues
Only because we're all pansies. An orion drive operating in outer space wouldn'
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Aside from the issue of not being able to manufacture it in any sort of significant quantity,
Yeah, other than that, magic pixie dust would be even better
Would it be safe if we towed launch vehicles out in the middle of the ocean?
In summary yes as it would be far less polluting than the numerous above ground nuclear tests that were done.
Would there be any ionizing radiation to produce fallout?
Mostly no. The components would probably not be heavy metals that fission into terribly radioactive substances. Why use anti-uranium when anti-hydrogen is probably easier to deal with. Also nukes throw tons of neutrons out making massive neutron activated fallout problems whereas the antimatter reaction throws out lots of gammas which ar
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The problem is storing and transporting the antimatter. It can't be done reliably. So instead, you'd need to create the antimatter on board the ship. That'd need to be a pretty damn big ship.
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The problem is the fallout from the bombs of course. But if you take that radiation in perspective it does make you wonder if that would be a show-stopper for an important enough mission.
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Orion is not feasible in the current political situation. Risk of hijacking of a space vessel fueled by _nuclear_ _bombs_ is too high.
Also, I don't really care about "important missions". I want a sustainable continuos space program.
There are projects of nuclear rockets (where a nuclear reactor heats gas to very high temperature), however. Maybe one day something will come out of them.
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Well, Orion becoming practical was always predicated on cheap, clean (nearly pure fusion) bombs becoming practical - which never happened. The 'cheap' part is important too, as with the current cost of the bombs Orion is so expe
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Um, no. It costs $20 per pound delivered to orbit for rocket propellant. Since only, say, 1/4 of that is payload, say the true cost of propellant is $80 per pound of payload in orbit.
The vast majority of rocket launch expense is human salaries. The next largest expense is the expendable hardware. The propellant costs are down in the noise, approximately the same price as the celebration pizza party.
If you want to lower the cost of space access, don't bother with the engine technology - launch more often
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$20 per pound is WAY too small.
Let's calculate. The kinetic energy of 1 kg moving at 8km/s is 3.2*10^7J. The enthalpy of H2 combustion is 286kJ/mol but if we take O2 required for this reaction into account it'll be just 15.8kJ/g=1.58*10^7J/kg
So we'll need to burn at least:
1/2(m+Mf)*v^2=Mf*Jc where m is payload, Mf - mass of fuel and oxidizer, Jc - specific heat of combustion per 1 kg of fuel and oxidizer.
1/2(1+Mf)*6.4*10^7=Mf*1.58*10^7
(1+Mf)*3.2=Mf*1.58
Mf~=5.5kg of stochiometric fuel and oxidizer mix in the
Re:the hell? (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously, you have never designed a rocket. Fortunately I have!
Here are the real equations:
delta-v = 9.8 * Isp * ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass)
delta-v to orbit is about 9000 m/s
Isp is an engine parameter. Simple Lox/Kerosene engines come in around 350s, complex lox/hydrogen engines come in around 450s. (Rocket engines do not run stochiometric, they run fuel rich - the reasons are complex, but essentially hydrogen is better at converting heat into thrust than water.)
OK, so let's do some numbers:
9000 = 9.8 * 350 * ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass)
ln(launch_mass/orbit_mass) = 2.62
launch_mass/orbit_mass = 14
So you need 14 pounds of propellant for every pound of orbited mass. of that 14 pounds of propellant, about 3/4 are LOX - which is essentially free (pennies per pound in large quantities). So really you are paying for 10 pounds of kerosene, about $5 or so.
Now, for real rockets it ends up closer to $20 per pound, because 1) rockets tend to use more expensive liquid hydrogen, and 2) rockets stage, which is slightly fuel inefficient.
But my original numbers are correct. Yours are wrong - or at least misrepresented. 5.5 kg of propellant, 3/4 of which is LOX would not get you to orbit, but would cost about $1.
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Thanks for correction!
I really should have used the rocket equation rather than simple energy balance.
That's really interesting, if we can cut launch costs to about 3x fuel costs (as in airplanes) then we'll have a pretty viable space transport system.
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True that - it is often said that we dream of having fuel costs matter in this industry!
(Actually, right now the airline industry launch costs are almost entirely fuel!)
Curious. (Score:2)
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My take:
Really cool technology. Totally impractical, mainly for political reasons.
If you gave me one for deep space missions, I would use it. But I wouldn't pay for it - and it really does nothing for the real problem, going from Earth to LEO.
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NASA went on the Single Stage to Orbit pipe dream throughout the 1990's. What Spaceship 1 got right was a Dual Stage to Orbit platform where you have a large conventional aircraft haul the orbiter to 60k feet, drop it, then let the orbiter boost from there. It's still expensive, but far cheaper per pound than the current systems and it could be done with current technology.
Basically SS1 did what Mercury/Redstone did in the 1950's. Granted we didn't have the unknown factors that they faced back then, but
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"Spaceship" 1 is garbage. It's not even close to orbital speed (its maximum speed was 3518km/h while you need about 29000km/h to enter the LEO).
The whole "two stage" system is also mostly junk it just gives an extra 1000km/h which is totally lost when compared with the orbital speed.
They don't suck they blow (Score:2)
The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.
If you've built a rocket that sucks you are doing it wrong. They need to blow!
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The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.
There's just no way to cheaply lift payload to orbit using our current rockets.
Your second sentence doesn't quite say the same thing as the first. Current chemical rockets suck. NASA seems enamored of solid fuels which are low-powered (low Isp), require ridiculously heavy structure (the whole thing is combustion chamber), and messy. They claim they're "reusable", when what they mean is they crash them in the ocean and then salvage them. The H2/O2 liquid fuel m
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A lot of Russian rockets actually use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsymmetrical_dimethylhydrazine [wikipedia.org] and NO3 as an oxidant. And Methane + O2 is a bit worse than UDMH+NO3 mix.
Personally, I like the idea of nuclear rockets. But they are just too far from reality.
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NO3? I think you mean NO4 - nitrogen tetroxide. At least that's what the US Titan uses and is used in the reaction control systems on eg Shuttle. The advantage is that mix is hypergolic, the disadvantage is that both components are highly toxic and corrosive.
I'm not sure by what criteria you're evaluation CH4+02 as "worse" -- it's less toxic and has a higher Isp.
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Yes, of course it's N2O4 (I need to to write less posts after 20h coding session...).
Yes, and UDMH/N2O4 has a much bit worse Isp - about 330 seconds against 350-380 for LOX/CH4.
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Whoops, you're right, N204, not NO4. D'oh. I need to go get more coffee, I don't even have your excuse. ;-)
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1. Drag asteroid or other rock into geostationary orbit.
2. Dangle carbon nanotube based ropes onto planet surface
3. ????
4. Profit
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3 drag carbon nanotube cable through a thunder storm
4 light up like Uncle Fester
The electric potentials on Earth often get pretty extreme during an electrical storm and carbon nanotube are conductive. I've seen videos of carbon nanotubes exploding when irradiated with a flash of light, that's a bad combination! If they shoot rockets [wikipedia.org] into the sky to bring down lightening trailing a thin conductive wire or even a conductive contrail [wikipedia.org] imagine what something massive like a space elevator cable will do!
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what if your cables do not touch the earth but are rather holding up a floating base/platform at a certain height that could be helicoptered to?
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The main problem is: chemical rockets suck.
Nuclear thermal [wikipedia.org] rockets are the only way we can expect to efficiently become a space faring people. The problem is that there are some risks...
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There's just no way to cheaply lift payload to orbit using our current rockets.
Sure there is. High launch frequency and reusable vehicles. Rocket propellant isn't expensive.
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I wouldn't expect it to look like anything else. Like airliners or submarines the design is driven mainly by aerodynamics (hydrodynamics) and engineering constraints, not by the need to 'look' different in order to be fashionable or meet the expectations of someone who expects it to look.. I don't know, modern? Science fiction-y?
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Actually, I think it bears an uncanny resemblance to E.V.E. [google.com]
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If it ain't broke, don't fix it. As long as we are stuck using chemical rockets launched from the Earth's surface the basic capsule design works.
Lunar? (Score:3, Interesting)
The choice of words "towards the moon" is very well done. Article states this is capable of bring six people into Terran orbit, and four into Lunar orbit. I understand the difficulty in getting down to the moon and back up, but if you're capable of getting there and back with four people, odds are you can get down to the surface. Why not just go for broke? At the very least it'd be a huge PR coup.
Re:Lunar? (Score:5, Informative)
Not a bit of it. It's a question of fuel.
Having reached the Moon, you have to fire engines to slow down into orbit. Otherwise you loop around the back and head straight back to Earth like Apollo 13. So you need to carry fuel for this.
So now you're circling the Moon like Apollo 8. Good. To come home, you need to fire engines again to speed back up. More fuel.
But wait, you want to visit the surface? Then you need a lander. Those things are heavy. And it needs fuel: fuel to land, and fuel to take off again.
That's the trouble with spaceflight. It's all about fuel. Every manoeuvre burns fuel. Every kilogram of fuel means you need even more fuel at the start, just to carry that fuel into space with you. It's why the Saturn V rocket was the size of a skyscraper, but only carried something the size of a minibus to the moon, and brought only a tiny capsule home to Earth. All the rest? Fuel tanks.
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It's why the Saturn V rocket was the size of a skyscraper, but only carried something the size of a minibus to the moon, and brought only a tiny capsule home to Earth.
As you so correctly state, fuel is the key. Except, the Saturn V only got them to the moon. Getting into orbit, landing, coming back up, and getting back to earth was the job of your minibus and tiny capsule. Clearly, it is quite possible to pull off the whole shebang by throwing a huge rocket at the back of it to get it off the planet (by far the hardest part). Using a system like the Saturn V or current boosters is by no means a far reach for them. It sure as hell wouldn't be easy, but if they're a
Re:Lunar? (Score:4, Informative)
Saturn V got Apollo to the Moon, with the fuel and equipment necessary to stop and land there and to come home again.
Let's see: the service module, the lunar excursion module, all the fuel for both of them... that's got to be three or four times the mass of the command module, which was all that got back to Earth (I haven't looked it up so this is probably well off). A rocket whose sole purpose was to send a crew around the Moon, but not to land, could have been a whole lot smaller than Saturn V.
Look at it this way: suppose that bringing along a lander and fuel supplies for a Moon landing doubles the mass of your spacecraft at the Moon. Then clearly, that must require that you at least double the size of the rocket on the pad.
I don't actually know what the plan would be for a Moon landing with this vehicle. The fact that it has its own thrusters for landing suggests to me that it might have a direct-ascent mission profile: no separate lander, just bring down the whole ship. NASA considered this approach when planning Apollo: it has the benefit of simplicity, but would have needed a more powerful rocket even than Saturn V to bring enough fuel. Perhaps with modern materials and engineering it could be done this way: but as the article says, no rocket powerful enough currently exists.
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Alternative: have ability to refuel on orbit, so you can send the fuel with separate rocket or two, and fuel the landing capsule on lunar orbit (probably twice, once for landing and takeoff from the Moon, second time for the trip home).
Then you can cope with much smaller rockets. But of course refueling in lunar orbit is probably quite a complicated operation, and fatal if something goes wrong, and might be very hard with some rocket fuels... I guess all these complications are why it wasn't done with Apoll
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Of course, at that point you're talking about establishing infrastructure in lunar orbit, so the next step is to establish infrastructure on
Re:Lunar? (Score:4, Insightful)
And can't do now.
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Yeah, well, ten years ago I proved I can see my toes. Doesn't mean I can now.
Its going to land how? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure I'd be too happy if I was being put in that, the booster landing thing sounds like its asking for trouble if you get low on fuel, or they get knocked out of alignment or a floating point error messes up their servo controllers....
At least with a parachute or wings you know that so long as they are they they will work. Also I imagine that it will require a huge amount of fuel to turn it around and then slow it.
Or have I got the wrong idea and they're going to parachute in and then just use these at the end at which point again you have to ask - why bother?
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Re:Its going to land how? (Score:5, Informative)
I'd guess the thrusters are used only during final touchdown to soften the landing...JUST LIKE SOYUZ DOES (and if they fail, the touchdown will simply be a little rough...JUST LIKE IN SOYUZ)
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Exactly. Any other way would be prohibitive in terms of the amount of fuel you'd need.
Why thrusters? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re: The Summary (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently the ESA / Russia are ushering in a new age of "close enough" space exploration.
News Report, 2021:Today astronauts from the ESA will begin a new chapter of space exploration by first going up really high, and then kinda drifting off in sort of a that way direction. The mission captain was interviewed recently concerning the importance of today's historic flight.
"We are confident that the up portion of the mission will go smoothly. We then plan to transfer to the next stage where, God willing, we will be the among the first humans to end up somewhere over toward the Moon." He commented, waving vaguely off toward the sky.
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The worst thing about this is that, given our trust in gouverment and media, by 2021 we expect to see that kind of vague information...
Same shit.... (Score:2)
Okay, it looks cool, I'll give you that. An it is much better design than that repackaged Apollo wanna be that nasa is going to put up. But you know what? It's still dead end technology. It's the same crap we've been doing for the last 40 years, just in a shinny new package. The landing thrusters are something new, I'll give you that.
But it's the 21 century now. Time to do something new. Why don't we build a fucking space ship? Not capsules or orbiters but a honest to god ship. We've got most o
How do we know it's manned? (Score:2)
I don't see a man in there.
After Soviet Russia, suspicion is hard to allay.
big difference between CAD drawing and working one (Score:2)
"Official Images"? (Score:2, Funny)
I like the unofficial images better [clevelandseniors.com].
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It's not that cool. If they named it Plan 9 for outer space, that would be cool.
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They forgot to mention that there isn't any rocket capable of sending that capsule to Moon orbit.
Unless you count the part that says, "But if the agencies want a manned craft capable of reaching the Moon, they will need to develop new, more powerful rockets than those on the drawing board today."
Re:Towards the Moon (Score:4, Informative)
The lack of a Saturn-class booster does pretty much kill the idea though. Neither Arianespace nor Energiya are going to fund the development of that kind of monster, not when there's no commercial use for it and no guarantee of continued political backing for manned Moonshots.
Hence the first related story linked from TFA [bbc.co.uk], which discusses the prospect of an ATV-derived spacecraft to launch on an Ariane 5. Much cheaper, and using existing kit. Funding for it might require political change in Britain, however, which has so far refused to get involved in manned projects.
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> Neither Arianespace nor Energiya are going to fund the development of that kind of monster
They don't need to fund the development, they can just dust-down the plans for the Energia launcher ( and rebuild the jigs, and recast the parts etc etc )
Even in its basic, twice-flown configuration it can loft 95 tonnes to LEO. Strap-on derivatives were proposed for 170 tonnes.
And as it was designed to lIft Buran, it is designed to be man-rated.
http://www.buran-energia.com/energia/energia-desc.php [buran-energia.com]
Re:What's the flippin' point? (Score:5, Insightful)
You might as well ask what the point of new music is? We've already got tons of it, more than enough to go around for a lifetime, so why don't we just close up shop, and put all that money, which happens to be more than is invested in manned space exploration, into poverty relief?
It's human nature to see something you can't do and then try to do it. Why bother scaling Everest? It served no purpose, but it was there and we did it. There should be no area of human existence where we refuse to advance ourselves - whether poverty relief, musical innovation, or space exploration. Mankind needs to do more, it needs to search higher. Knowing more about the universe is never a bad thing, and while cost-analysis should be taken into consideration, it borders on inhumane to deny our basic instincts for discovery.
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You might as well ask what the point of new music is? We've already got tons of it, more than enough to go around for a lifetime, so why don't we just close up shop, and put all that money, which happens to be more than is invested in manned space exploration, into poverty relief?
A much better question is what's the point of yet another anti-human space exploration rant, when there's already too many uncreative ones whining for yet more money for programs that are already recognized as miserable failures, more than enough for a lifetime of reading. So, why not close up shop, stop posting anti-human space exploration rants, and redirect all that effort into poverty relief?
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Ok.
1) Permanent Moonbase, with benefits of
a) Research opportunities in microgravity (I know ISS has this but you could do bigger scope projects on the moon).
b) Mining. Finding rare minerals would be key.
c) Platform base for building missions to other planets. Sure going to Mars can be done without going to the moon. But it might be a good launching platform for missions to Jupiter, Saturn, etc. Also the aforementioned atomic methods could be usable from teh moon.
d) Expand Scientific knowledge of the moo
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It shouldn't be that hard to send a cache of fuel to fuel a return trip.
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Now I wish I hadn't already posted so that I could mod you down to oblivion ;-)
You have no soul, and even less imagination. I'd accuse you of being an AI but I'm not sure the second word applies. No doubt you feel (not think) that Isabella should have fed the poor instead of funding Columbus -- and five hundred years later we'd be far worse off. Voyages of exploration and discovery both raise the technology level, and thus the overall standard of living, and lift the human spirit.
Besides, it's not an eit
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Who said I was American? Okay, TFA is about Russian-European programm - s/federal/European national/.
As for you telling other people how they should spend their money -- how rude.
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I'm tired of this attitude. How about humans never going anywhere? After Leif Ericsson landed in the North America, what was the point of going there again? Why did we ever leave Africa? Sure, once or twice, that's cool. But you know the most insightful and not at all casually and mindlessly used saying; "Been there, done that".
We could and should do exploration in two stages, reconnaissance and field study. Robotic missions can be used to orbit new worlds to get the big picture, and to do some exploration
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But Soyuz DOES include thrusters for softer touchdown... (which is simply a little rough when they fail)
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Actually the Russians are the de facto masters of hybrid parachute-thruster technology, not only do they use it for their spacecraft their military use the same technic for parachuting heavy cargo in military airdrops.